Bats & The Queen
The season is on! Which season? Football, Volleyball, Cross Country, Golf, Soccer...you name it; the sticks and the balls and the nets, the helmets, the hitting, the sweat—all ramping up for participants and fans alike. And others.... Came home after the football game the other night—which, by the way, could have been played on top of the hinges of hell,...
A Quiet Week
Well, it’s been a quiet week in Little Garrettsville. (Lake Wobegone was another story) BUT…things are moving along. The paving over the “grooved pavement” is inching toward finished; there are lines and everything. Crews are on-site to take down the perennial eyesore downtown which has been “slip-slidin’ away” for –LO!—these many years. Haz-Mat suits and all, they seem to be doing...
Return of the Prodigal Cat
I started with a dog, you know. Her name was Samantha, which rapidly became “Sammie”; her mother was a purebred apricot poodle and her father was a traveling salesman of some sort...whatever he was selling, she bought it. Anyway, Sammie was a nice dog, a good dog...and not much more discreet than her mama—had three puppies under the couch...
Up, Up and Away!
Wasn’t that a song some time back? “Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon”...or something like that? Goes on to say, “Would you like to ride in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon?” Catchy tune. Google says that The 5th Dimension and Dionne Warwick got the most play with it. Anyway… Saturday last I was engaged in my...
Biscuits and Beyond
All right! Consider yourself warned. If you missed the Chicken and Biscuits Extravaganza at the Garrettsville United Methodist Church last week, you will have another chance in the future, because it got such a good reception that there will likely be a rematch and the dessert table will feature a Greatest Hits tour with...
Horticulture Hotspot!
Well, if it ever rains again….. What’s up with this weather? Every day, just about, the weather guru’s keep saying that there “may be scattered showers, with a chance of thunderstorms”...” isolated rain showers and T-storms”...”possible T-storms with hail or heavy rainfall”. And what have we been getting? Zip. Zero. Nada. Which is about what I am getting on the...
Tell You What – An Editorial
Tell you what…. Let’s have everyone who says, “Why don’t they…(whatever it is about the rebuilding needed on Garrettsville’s Main St.) or “They need to…(suggestions for operations to be carried out to restore Main St.) or “They ought to…(directions on how to accomplish the rebuilding of half of Garrettsville’s business district), everyone who utters one of these or similar...
Cat Contest
Well, I’m certainly put out... disappointed... chagrined (Not you, Falls ites). Whilst the Garrettsville SummerFest was tootling along its merry way, I was missing the grand convocation of the Great Lakes Region of the Cat Fanciers Association at the John S. Knight Center in downtown Akron last Saturday and Sunday. The tractors, fire engines, unicyclists and French fries won...
Ahhhhh….. Spring!
If Jack-in-the-Pulpits are any indication, my yard is a veritable vegetation revival! Nothing in the bulletin tells what the message is. They’ve popped up in the front, the back, the side lawns. They’ve out hustled even the ferns. They’ve beaten the trilliums, hands down. Wonder what got into them all of a sudden. Maybe the ferocious cold that knocked...
Deal Of A Lifetime
Such a deal I had for you! Could have had ‘em just like that. But no, nobody stepped up to get in on the giveaway. Ask me nice and maybe arrangements can be made. Bargains! Freebies! They’ll be going fast, lemme tell ya. What’s that? Some timid, unadventurous soul asks what the hubbub is about. What’s being given away? Well,...
St. Fiacre
So…I’m thinking that my gardening endeavors are in need of divine intervention—for the fungus or whatever it is that’s devastating the hollyhocks and the tomatoes, the slugs and/or whatever is feasting on the berry bushes, the infant poison ivy that seems to be popping up all over the place, the ”sweet violets”, AKA Chameleon plants that are sending out their smelly but vigorous roots everywhere but in the “dead zone” where I’d like them to move in—and I was reading a murder mystery involving a public garden with a statue of a holy fellow called St. Fiacre(Irish--Fiachra, Latin—Fiachrius) patron saint of gardeners (…and maybe cab drivers…who knew?). Why not give him a shot?
A Bad Spell
It wasn’t pretty. The brain trust here at the Weekly Villager sallied forth to adventures in orthography by participating in the22nd Annual Community Spelling Bee for Literacy, co-sponsored by the Portage County Literacy Coalition Community Partners at the NEOMED Conference Center on Friday, May 24, 20013. And fourth…maybe fifth… was about where we wound up…out of five. Like lots of vital...
Party Central
There’s got to be a time limit of some sort on Spring Cleaning. I just finished mine…in time for Party Central in the neighborhood. Whoo-whoo! Luckily, the rain held off until after the throngs had ebbed and the clean-up crew was packing up the detritus left by the crowds in attendance. Said crowds were able to sit on chairs that...
The Frost Spirit Comes
That line comes from John Greenleaf Whittier, who was once considered one of the premier poets of American literature. Raise your hands out there if you remember his name at all…. That’s what I thought. The whole of the quote–found in the OFA– is this : “The Frost Spirit comes! And the quiet lake shall feel…The torpid touch of...
What in the Weird?
Yes, indeed, There is all kinds if it out there…weird, I mean. For instance, the other day there was a short piece on line about a political uproar in Wisconsin, where politicians–mostly Republicans, I fear–were in an uproar about passing a law against naked bicycle-riding. Seems to me that would be a self-limiting enterprise to start with, but what do...
Kool Porch Kitties
Well, it had to happen. The porch kitties now have a fan base. Can a world tour be far behind? As you may have noticed, it’s been pretty d----d cold outside lately. And despite the heated, insulated luxury boxes on the front porch for the cats, there were some temperature-related issues confronting me and the denizens of the aforementioned boxes,...
Cool Critters
The porch kitties seem to have rediscovered the charms of the heated kitty condos available to them here at the manse. I now have three regulars to greet me in the morning (At about 6:00a.m., so you know what the temperature has been like) when they get their breakfast. There’s I.B.M.—Irresponsibly Bad Mamma, Moppet (named like a cow we...
In addition…
In addition to pareidolia, I occasionally suffer(if that’s the right word) from bouts of mondegreen; I don’t think that it’s covered by any reputable insurance(though it’s likely on the docket for some fly-by-night, blood-sucking outfit from the late-night TV)but it can be sort of debilitating when you’ve got it. Pareidolia, as you must recall, is usually seeing significant images in totally random contexts, like the guy down in Louisiana who cut open an eggplant and beheld the word “God” spelled out in seeds. Elvis and the Virgin Mary are apt to turn up anywhere, from a toasted cheese sandwich to pictures in mildew on old walls.
The Return of Champ
“Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill.” With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson, I believe that we can remove the sea from consideration in this case (Camp Creek down behind the back yard hardly qualifies as anything like “the bounding main.” It doesn’t even come up to the level of Lake Erie.),...
Adventures in summer travel…or…You Can’t Get There From Here
You know those orange and white saw horses that the ODOT crews used to have marking off forbidden territory when the summer construction season started? (They have up-dated all that now with tall, skinny cones and plastic tape) An ironic gentleman of my acquaintance once proposed that they should be designated the state animal…probably because they spent even...
About The Other Chicks…
And about the other chicks…. The Sports Illustrated “swimsuit issue” recently came. A subscriber may choose to skip that issue—for ethical reasons or whatever—but I choose not to (I have no ethics that tender anyway) because I send it to my brother-in-law, a nurse and a fireman, both at once, who then is able to celebrate his birthday with the...
Der Tag…the Day is upon us!
It’s beginning to look a lot like....O.K., who left the Clint Eastwood glam pin-ups on the fridge? Get them down right now and put them with the Chuck Klamer voodoo figurine...the one with the pins in it. Put a red bow on the top; it’ll work. Yes, Virginia, there IS a Christmas Walk and it’s coming this way. NOW! The outside...
Red Letter Day
A RED-LETTER DAY Or a red something, anyway. As I have said before, you can’t make this stuff up. It seems that in Sheboygan, WI a group of brewers has got together to raise money for charity by being featured—mostly in the buff—posing in a calendar which will be sold online or at numerous bars, liquor stores and groceries in Wisconsin...
Sic transit gloria mundi
“Thus passes the glory of the world” Have I used that line before? How about “Time flies when you’re having fun.”? Well, both apply just now, as regards the latest project which I am involved in. That is to say, cleaning out Mother’s house. Bless her heart, now that she’s gone, I can write about her...things that she never would have...
Stupid Virus
So somebody on a slow news day—Newsweek was mentioned but the internet picked the mention up and ran with it—called it the “stupid virus” and implied that any lagging intellectual powers among us might be the fault of an insidious invasion by these viral marauders...
Favorite Son
This commonly-used political term came to mind the other day when my mom sent me a clipping from our local newspaper back in Wellington (Lorain County, west of here on St. Rtes. 58 & 18), either the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram or the Wellington Enterprise—I really didn’t check. In politics, the term usually refers to an up-and-coming sort that has aspirations...
Boaty McBoatface
Always be careful of what you wish for; you may get it. A warning nicely illustrated by a recent item on various news media. It seems that some British outfit called the National Environmental Research Council, preparing to launch a brand-new $287 million—aw, let’s call it $300 even, like all of those government project go—polar(south) research vessel, thought it would...
If It Isn’t One Thing…
If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. We’ve finally seen the end of the political ads (Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?—Robert Orben). The signs should all be picked up until the next go-round and we can listen to the moans of the losers...
Urgent!
Well, now, THERE was a week! Elections on Tuesday. It was heartening to see that our precinct (Garrettsville A) was up over the prediction of the Board of Elections, not much, but every little bit helps. I think that Garrettsville B was over too but I didn’t check. It’s also neat to see so many former students whom I exhorted...
Plate City
Once upon a time, specific clerks dealt with specific operations and the issuer of license plates might be snowed under with people waiting and waiting, while the driver’s license clerk was able to sit at her leisure to examine the new nail color that she had chosen and tempers tended to shorten as the wait time lengthened. Well, that’s done with…and none too soon.
